Kid Chaos is a scrolling platform game created by Shaun Southern and Andrew Morris of Magnetic Fields, and published by Ocean Software in 1994.

It was originally intended to be a game to rival Sega‘s Sonic the Hedgehog, with a main character called ‘Claws’ who was futuristic and cat-like, but at the last minute the game was redesigned and the main character was turned into a ‘caveboy’ called ‘Kid’… Either publisher Ocean had been warned about potential legal action, or someone on the project got cold feet… As a result: the game got dumbed-down.

Kid Chaos – unsurprisingly – still plays very much like Sonic the Hedgehog, with lots of running and jumping and spinning somersaults. To make it through the levels you need to know when you can run; when you must jump; and when you need to slow down or stop. You also need to destroy a certain number of items per level, in order to open the exit door. These destroyable items change from level to level, but the process of destroying them stay the same: spin into them a break them with your club.

The same can be done to the various enemies patrolling the levels – spin into them to kill them. Hit them when you’re not spinning, though, and you’ll lose health. How much health you lose depends on what kind of enemy you’re hitting.

As the levels progress the hazards become more frequent and challenging, and – it has to be said – more frustrating! That said: there is a password system to lighten the load.

Kid Chaos is not a bad game at all. It’s beautifully presented and fun for a while. You can’t escape wondering, though, what it might have been if they hadn’t changed it.

More: Kid Chaos on Wikipedia